The CW's Legacies called back to an important scene from The Vampire Diaries' pilot in season 1, episode 10. Fed up with her dad's attention largely landing on Hope and the Malivore drama, Lizzie makes a wish that Hope never came to the Salvatore School. A wish Malivore monster-of-the-week - and genie-like jinn - "Jinni" is more than happy to make come true. Unfortunately for Lizzie, she soon learns life without Hope is far from better.
Lizzie, in a desperate bid to right the wrong she's made, attempts to amend her wish several times but keeps making the alternate worlds she finds herself in worse and worse. In one of the altered realities, Lizzie and Josie, Gemini twins who are siphoners, no longer attend the Salvatore School and are instead enrolled at Mystic Falls High. Their father, Alaric, is also present at the school in this altered reality, but he's a far different man than the one Lizzie knew as headmaster in her original reality.
The Alaric Saltzman of Lizzie's wish-inspired and vastly altered world is, in fact, a pot-bellied drunk, day drinking while teaching history at Mystic Falls High. In his lecture on a particular part of history that has come up before in the vampiric franchise, Alaric pays off a similar classroom scene from the very first episode of the more popular series, The Vampire Diaries. Alaric references 27 civilians who were killed in the Battle of Willow Creek that took place in Mystic Falls during the Civil War, a fact original high school history teacher, Mr. Tanner, was unaware of until Stefan Salvatore brought it to his attention.
In The Vampire Diaries episode 1, Mr. Tanner quizzed the class on how many casualties occurred at the Battle of Willow Creek. After publicly deriding Bonnie and Matt for not knowing the answer, he similarly berated Elena by informing her any leniency he once gave her over her parents' death was now over. Stefan, in the first of many examples where he jumped to Elena's defense, including when Stefan sacrificed himself for Damon and Elena, answered the question correctly. He also dressed Mr. Tanner down for his claim that there were zero civilian casualties in the battle that took place. "Actually, there were 27, sir," Stefan said. "Confederate soldiers, they fired on the church believing it to be housing weapons. They were wrong. It was a night of great loss. The founders' archives are stored in Civil Hall if you'd like to brush up on your facts, Mr. Tanner." It's a moment that instantly endeared Stefan to his classmates and information that's since clearly been added to the curriculum.
It was a fitting touch that Legacies referenced events from The Vampire Diaries in Alaric's history lesson. He also offered new information about what went down that fateful night. Whereas Stefan's story only referenced why the Confederates fired on the church, Alaric's telling informed why those civilians were in the church in the first place. "All those 27 civilians," Alaric said. "They were just round up by their friends and neighbors, all because they were different..." That's a chilling addition to the historical record that suggests the 27 civilians killed were members of the magical community. It also makes the story of why the Confederate Soldiers thought the church was filled with weapons all the more suspect. Stefan and Damon have lived a long time, and could very well have been rounded up by the townspeople, too. Was it the citizens of Mystic Falls themselves who let slip to the Confederate soldiers the potential threat within the church?
Mystic Falls has showcased a disdain for supernatural persons over the years, but this tragedy seems to be one of its darkest chapters. It's no coincidence Alaric was the one who brought these details to light. In Lizzie's home reality, Alaric runs a boarding school for magical students so they can be kept safe from the mystically challenged while learning to use and control their special abilities. The school Alaric and Caroline Forbes founded in Legacies is exactly the necessary counterbalance to a community that was hostile to mystically enabled residents long before Stefan Salvatore enrolled at Mystical Falls High in The Vampire Diaries.